the comments came during a foreign policy conversation at a washington think tank forum. nbc's kristen welker is live for us at the white house. kristen, did the president successfully sell his deal today? >> reporter: well, craig, i think that remains to be seen. but that is what he was doing. he was trying to sell this deal to the skeptics here in the united states, but also to israelis, a lot of israeli journalists in the audience there today. if you look at the polls inside israel, a lot of folks don't like this deal. so president obama trying to convince them of the merits of this deal, making the point that, look, it is a test. it's a six-month freeze of iran's nuclear program that will be tested by inspectors who will go into the country and determine their level of seriousness. he also made the point that of the $100 billion worth of sanctions, this scales back about $7 billion of those, leaving the main sanctions in place. here's a little bit more of what he had to say this afternoon. take a listen. >> if we could create an option in which iran eliminated every s